Consumers usually make purchases in one of two ways. The first, a traditional approach, involves visiting a dealer or merchant's place of business, listening to a salesperson's pitch, testing selected goods, and then haggling over price. Similarly, consumers purchase real estate by the traditional approach by visiting and touring the real estate and then haggling over price. This approach advantageously provides consumers an opportunity to view the particular product or real estate in-person and receive hands-on demonstrations of features and options or the ability to view it in its entirety. However, this approach is time-consuming and interacting with a salesperson can be intimidating for many consumers.
The second approach involves a “virtual showroom” where consumers can research and price goods, real estate, and the like on the Internet. This approach advantageously allows consumers to search for goods or real estate in less time and with less salesperson interaction than the traditional approach. Unfortunately, when visiting a virtual showroom, consumers are often limited to stock photographs and generic information and must forego the more traditional “walk around” experience. Current systems and methods of acquiring photographs and/or videos of goods or real estate and making them available on the Internet are labor-intensive and require skillful use of technologically advanced devices and software. Consequently, even if actual photographs and/or videos of a particular product, real estate, or the like are available, they are often limited in scope and cannot adequately convey how a product or real estate appears in-person and its actual condition. In addition, the information available is often non-specific and relates generally to a make and model rather than specifically to the particular item. In other words, consumers sacrifice advantageous aspects of the traditional goods or real estate purchasing approach in order to enjoy the convenience and other advantages of the virtual showroom approach.
Moreover, many virtual sellers often employ a “no haggle” pricing model. As a result, it becomes important for virtual sellers to make a high volume of sales. A virtual seller attempting to make a high volume of sales must quickly acquire information about goods or real estate in its inventory, including photographs and/or videos of the goods or real estate, and make that information available to consumers on the Internet. Conventional systems and methods are unable to acquire photographs and/or videos of goods or real estate and post them on the Internet with the necessary throughput to keep up with the quick turnaround of high-volume sales.